Possible Focus Questions
- What factors influence the ways we view the process of dying?
- How do different societies, cultures, and subcultures view dying and death differently?
- How does our understanding of death influence our understanding of life?
Possible "Literature" Texts
- Everyman
- The Undertaking by Thomas Lynch
- Wit by Margaret Edson (there is also a film version of this play starring Emma Thompson that I might show in class)
- Otherwise: New and Selected Poems by Jane Kenyon (Kenyon died from leukemia while she was editing this volume. I probably wouldn't assign the whole book.)
- Without by Donald Hall (Hall, Kenyon's husband, wrote this volume after her death. I thought it might be interesting to pair Kenyon's dying book with Hall's mourning book.)
- As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
- Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
Possible Theoretical Texts (I haven't read these yet. I'm just investigating.)
- Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors by Susan Sontag
- Kindred Specters: Death, Mourning and American Affinity by Christopher Peterson
- American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford
Cultural Artifacts
- Dead Like Me A darkly comic show about wage-slave grim reapers.
- Six Feet Under TragiComedy about a family running a funeral home.
- Body Worlds Museum exhibit of real human corpses.
February 9, 2008
Just trying to get some ideas for potential courses down before I forget them.
1. The literature of death and dying
Morbid, I know. I came up with this idea after watching a preview for "The Bucket List" and after talking to my good friend at the University of Chicago who is writing her thesis on the American funeral. I think there are some rich possibilities here.
My basic premise: Death is physical reality. Dying, however, along with mourning and funerals and obituaries and hospice and "the deathbed" and all the trappings of death are socially constructed practices. These practices. . .do something. I need to do some more thinking on that. My initial responses would be that they teach us how to die or give meaning to death but, like I said, I need to think on that some more. My central question for the course would be something along these lines. Maybe "How is dying constructed through the literature of death and dying?" or "How do we die in contemporary America?" I'm still working on it.
What we would read: Characters die all the time in literature (unless the author is too much of a pussy to kill them off) but I would want to focus on literature that deals with the processes of dying, mourning, eulogizing, etc. . . more explicitly. I also want to span a pretty big swathe of time with my main focus lying on contemporary literature. Some possibilities that I can think of include. . .
- Everyman
- The Undertaking by Thomas Lynch
- Wit by Margaret Edson (there is also a film version of this play starring Emma Thompson that I might show in class)
- Otherwise: New and Selected Poems by Jane Kenyon (Kenyon died from leukemia while she was editing this volume. I probably wouldn't assign the whole book.)
- Without by Donald Hall (Hall, Kenyon's husband, wrote this volume after her death. I thought it might be interesting to pair Kenyon's dying book with Hall's mourning book.)
These are the ones that I know for sure I would want to use. There are lots of other books, plays, films, etc. . . that I could choose from. Do any of you have some suggestions? In particular, I'd like to find a few counter-narratives. In nearly all the works I've listed above, dying is meaningful in some way. I'd like to include something that constructs dying as unfair, meaningless, funny, etc. . . as a counterpoint. In addition to traditional works of literature, I'd like to include films, television, and other print sources. I could see, for example, asking students to read the obituaries to look for patterns in how we choose to remember the dead. Or maybe, I could bring in brochures from funeral parlors, hospice care providers, and maybe even a few sympahty cards and ask students to do a rhetorical analysis of them.
Theoretical Approach: I think that postmodernism fits pretty well because we are dealing primarily with a master narrative about death. Maybe some cultural studies as well. Any suggestions of how to approach the theoretical side? Do you know of any good critical texts I could use?
Idea 2: The Invention of Childhood
This idea occurred to me in class on Monday. Barbara mentioned something about the fact that childhood is a fairly new concept. I'd heard this before, but for some reason it stuck in my mind this time around. I thought it could be a pretty cool focus for a course.
My basic premise: This is a new idea for me and I need to do a lot more research for it but I think a good central question would be, "How is the concept of 'childhood' invented and promoted in early children's literature?"
What we would read: Again, I need to do a lot more research on this. I would like to focus on early children's literature. I found a few syllabi for courses on the 'golden age' of children's literature. It usually falls into the Victorian time period and is decidedly British. I would be interested to see if any tradition of children's literature existed before then or outside of the British Empire but I would need to do a little more work on that. Some basic texts (or at least the ones I can think of off the top of my head) are:
- Peter Pan
- Alice in Wonderland
- The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
- Little Women
- The Wizard of Oz
I obviously need to do more research on this.
Theoretical Approach: I think New Historicism, cultural studies, and maybe some textual studies fit well with this idea. Any comments or suggestions?
4 comments:
Dorothy-
I love the first course idea - I want to take your class! I think you're right in citing New Historicism and Textual Studies as approaches that would work well. It seems to me that this topic is one that would really benefit from the historical contextualizing that both lenses rely on.
While reading your ideas I thought of a series on PBS a few years ago by Bill Moyers called "On Our Own Terms." It's not about literature, but if you're planning to base your course in historical concepts or constructions of death, it says a lot about how modern Americans see it. It might even be useful to look back at early American texts and compare/contrast/trace this "American" way of talking about death.
yeah, like Michelle, I like this 'dying' course, too. Besides historicizing the topic, you'll also have to "culturize" it, for mourning customs/rituals are highly variable.
Another thing you'll have to include: issues of spirituality. For death, dying, etc. are ultimately tied to the meaning of life, IMHO.
As for other texts: be sure to check out Susan Sontag's stuff--i.e., Aids and Its metaphors; Death Kit (a novel); Regarding the Pain of Others (about atrocities); Illness as Metaphor...
To offset some of this heavy stuff, you might throw in a bit of Anne Rice and vampirism. I haven't read a lot of Rice but I did read one or two novels for a book club--and I was struck with how blood and sexuality really do run together in her work... written at the height of the AIDS epidemic 80s-90s.
Which reminds me of Mary Douglas's work in anthropology Danger and Pollution (I think that's the title)... about how blood is always sacralized or demonized--because it runs both inside and outside the body--liminal spaces or something like that.
I love bringing in funeral parlor brochures and doing rhetorical analysis.
Oh and how 'bout Six Feet Under?
Nuff said. Rich topic, easily complicated.
Re: childhood course.
I like this idea too. In fact, during our search for a EnglEd candidate this semester, I read a lot of writing samples on "kiddie lit" and young adult lit, etc. And some of the best stuff looked at how children are constructed in for-adults Victorian literature.
Another angle: if you throw in a bit of Romantic Period (e.g., Wm Blake's Song of Innocence or even Wordsworth Tintern Abby), you'll get some real socioeconomic class differences in that juxtaposition.
Another angle: I'd definitely throw in contemporary constructions. If you look at, say, Sesame Street vs. Barney & Friends vs. Blue's Clues, you'll see subtle shiftings in how children are socialized to be, well, children... and--oddly enough--more adult-like. James Gee has a great reading on these TV programs that I can lend you.
Also, Annette Lereau, a sociologist, has a brilliant study of how childrearing practices are very much class-based.
Yeah, another great topic. You're going to have a ball with this assignment!
I agree _Stiff_ would be a good text to use.
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